The Best of Times

We had a wonderful Sunday temple session this week with the Filipino sisters. Here are a few of them posing with Elder Chandler in front of the temple.

Okay, back to work, once in a while we go to KFC for lunch.  Here they give you nice little plastic gloves to eat with so you don't get messy but they don't have chicken breasts here.  Chicken breasts are considered the worst part of the chicken.  (It looks like Elder Chandler is ready to operate, don't you think?)

On Thursday and Friday we had family home evening with the Filipino sisters as part of our assignment, but we only took photos on Friday.  Time for Friday Family Family Home Evening!

This game is called, "I Want It"!  There are two teams and the leader says something to the effect, "I want a red purse".  Can you tell who won that round?

They wanted a black shoe so Elder Chandler was the first one up.

Then they wanted a sock but only a couple of people had socks. Fortunately for his team, Elder Chandler remembered to wear socks.

This is Elder Chandler's sock that won the game.  We hope he put on clean socks today.

Isn't she sweet?  We were glad that there was one child there for family home evening, too!

Preparing for dinner--usually noodles of some sort with chicken, ham and shrimp.  Chicken wings are very popular and very tasty.  It's amazing that the young missionaries always show up, too, when there is food.

Do they look hungry?  They can sure eat plenty.

The sisters purchase and prepare all the food and it's good food.

Everyone wants their picture taken with us old people.  Even thought theses sisters often have really difficult lives they are always trying to be happy 

Everyone had a good time eating and visiting.

The last couple of nights we left the office around 7 pm and it takes about 45 minutes to get home even though it is less than two miles as the crow flies.  This is the Cross Harbor Tunnel that we go through every day, twice a day to get to the office and then get home.  It is very crowded as you can see.

Shopping day is Saturday so we thought you might like to see some of the unusual foods that we might want to eat. Here are some foods available at the local grocery store where we shop.  Pig knuckles are very popular and very fatty.  See some more specialties below.

Does that look yummy? Check it out on Wikipedia:   Yummy Pig Trotters

If you want to live a long time, here's what you need to eat.

Funghi pizza, anyone?

All kinds of corn soups are really, really popular in China and in Japan.

Haven't tried this yet--I wonder what they did with the rest of the ox?

Every store has huge piles of rice to choose from, and this is only a small portion of their selection.  Has anybody seen Elder Chandler lately?

Lots of people love seaweed, do you?

Here's how you teach your Chinese child how to read English!

Of course, there's the ever present Pocky sticks, popular here and in Japan and in the U.S, now, we understand.

These might be French.

The fruit drinks are really quite good, especially the mango.  Some items you can read only with the pictures and you have to be careful not to get the tea.

Milk tea, anyone?

There is every kind of milk tea in the world that the Chinese love to drink.

Anyone for a little sweat?  That's all we do here in the heat and humidity.

So this is chicken bouillon.

Whatever it is, I think I'll take some with the sumo wrestler on it.  Of course, there are no sumo wrestlers in China, only in Japan. Actually, Wikipedia says there is Mongolian wresting, Chinese Shui jiao and Korean Ssireum, too, whatever those are.

Anyone for a little curry ramyun? Actually it's quite good.

And there is every kind of Ramen that you could ever imagine.

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You probably have dried mushrooms at your stores, too.

The kids love this!  We get our milk on the shelf, too.  We're kind of getting used to it as it isn't too bad when it's cold.  There is fresh milk but it isn't our favorite either.

We didn't have time to take photos of the baby food.  How about some sweet potato and Ba... or pumpkin cranberry apple, or pumpkin and spinach?

Notice that all the hair coloring is pretty much the same color--too bad for the blonds.  In Japan it was the same.  The sisters in the office said that they don't put people's  hair color on their drivers' licences for obvious reasons. 

We saved the best for last: Our family's best news is that little Evan Brandon Chandler was born this week, and as grandparents, we couldn't be more pleased!!!  (Since we've seen this photo on Facebook, we didn't think his parents would mind if we posted and bragged a bit, too.) We hope you all have a Happy Week, too!